Lehigh County Prison has not reversed its policy of allowing inmates to buy and posses up to two disposable razors, and Commissioner Jane S. Baker was wrong to say that it had, Corrections Director Richard O. Klotz said yesterday.

Klotz said the 10-month-old policy saves the county money and manpower and poses no additional risk in a prison where the 450 inmates have shown ingenuity in creating weapons. He said the policy will not be changed.

"When a razor is the only weapon an inmate can get, I will personally see to it that razors are removed from this institution," Klotz said.

"But when you take a sock and when you fill it with broken glass and when you can use it as a weapon, it's just as bad," he added, tossing two glass-filled white socks onto a table.

Klotz spoke at a new conference one day after Baker said the prison had issued a directive rescinding the policy in effect since the $50.9 million prison opened last April.

Baker, a candidate for county executive, said corrections officer Jerry Hudgins showed her a directive last week returning the prison to the old policy under which inmates were given a razor and were required to return it within 10 minutes.

But Klotz said the memo that Baker saw was a reminder to staff to sign in and out razors issued to inmates in special units such as intake, mental health and administrative and disciplinary segregation. It was not a change in policy, he said.

Klotz accused Baker of using Hudgins.

"I think Jane Baker is wrong to talk and use, I think she used Jerry Hudgins, OK, by naming him, that he told her that a policy (had) changed," Klotz said.

Hudgins, who was at the news conference, said he met Baker in the courthouse and she asked whether Klotz had reversed the policy.

"I said, `I have a memo from the captain as to the policy for specific areas of the jail,'" Hudgins said.

"She said, `Do you have it with you?' (I said,) `Yes, I do.' I showed her the memo that the captain put out to all concerned staff."

But Baker, reached later by telephone, said Hudgins stuck his head in the commissioners' seventh-floor office, and they went into the hall to talk.

"It was my understanding when I talked to Hudgins that it was a change in policy, that it was a reversion to the old policy," Baker said.

On Jan. 13, Hudgins and fellow guard Wayne Shosh appeared at a commissioners meeting and criticized the policy allowing inmates to buy and possess razors.

Only a week earlier, Shosh told the board, a female inmate had sliced herself with a razor and had to be revived before she was taken to Sacred heart Hospital. "She died and they brought her back," Shosh said.

But Klotz said the policy saves the county the cost of buying the 30,000 razors each year under the old policy.

"The new practice has the inmates paying for their own razors, and we have found that they use them repeatedly because the cost is billed to them," Klotz said.

He said the new policy saves manpower because guards no longer have to distribute and collect razors. He said it also eliminates the risk of corrections officers cutting themselves on razors used by inmates infected with the AIDS virus.

As for the female inmate, Klotz said she cut herself with a razor issued by the prison and slipped in unconsciousness.

"There was a rumor that night that she died," he said. "But rumors in this place are notorious."

Klotz said the guards are concerned about the new policy. But he said inmates fashion weapons from stereo headphones, bucket handles and toothbrushes and conceivably from items such as combs and hair picks.

"I could take the razors out," Klotz said. "I could take the earphones out. I can take out the combs ... And there still would be weapons if an inmate wanted them."

Klotz said six inmates have cut themselves with razors since the new prison opened and in four of the cases the prison had issued the blades.

Baker said she assumes the yet-to-be-appointed chairman of the board's Corrections Committee will hold a hearing on the razor policy.